A day of sharp sun, so beautiful I’m taken with the idea of opening up the tall windows in the bedroom. I spread them wide, setting a cushion on the Juliet balcony, thinking of Lucy Honeychurch opening her shutters at the Pension Bertolini.
The sun cooks my face but the breeze is still fresh, so I’m wrapped in my thickest cardigan. My coatigan. I fetch my copy of Jane Eyre but I don’t read. I look out instead, calm for the first time in more than five weeks, perhaps because I haven’t done my Internet searches today. Head back against the window frame, eyes closed, my eyelids glowing red with the brightness, I hear the patter-pat of shoes in the alley below.
Slowly I straighten, squinting, to see the top of a head beyond the wall. Grey hair. Something familiar about it, then a face upturned and her eyes meet mine, and I am stabbed by familiarity and the shock of love. Beloved face. I drop Jane Eyre and it falls from the balcony like a shot bird.
I launch haphazardly into the dark interior of the flat, pummelling down the stairs to open the door to her. What is she doing here? How much will she hate me for what I have done? How much does she know, and how, oh how on earth will I tell her? The secrets I have harboured; the secrets that will destroy her. The secrets I have been running from for five long weeks.
I unbolt the door and there is her ashen, accusatory face and she has aged ten years since I last saw her. My fault.
‘How could you?’ she growls.
‘Mum, I … I can explain. I can, Mum,’ I say. ‘You don’t understand …’ But my words are stuck. ‘I never wanted to hurt you …’
‘How could you?’
‘There are so many things you don’t know,’ I cry. I cannot gather myself, cannot prevent myself crumpling into a child’s anguish.
‘I thought you were dead,’ she says. Her eyes red-rimmed, now brimming, her forehead furrowed with disbelief and anger. There is nothing worse than seeing your mother cry and being the cause.
‘Come in,’ I say, and I pull her towards me, take her in my arms, and she emits a cry of pain, her body heaving into mine. Her shouts, animalistic, are embarrassingly loud, bouncing off the alley walls. ‘Come in,’ I say. ‘I’ll make you some tea. I can explain, I can explain why …’
She snivels, reaches into her bag for a tissue, and wipes the wetness from her eyes and nose.
I lead her up the dark stairs to my apartment, wondering where I can begin. Explaining my disappearance means telling her things about our family that she shouldn’t have to know. I don’t know where I can start without hurting her, but I have hurt her already. I bring her into the lounge, take her handbag gently from her and lay it on the sofa, then guide her to a seated position.
‘I don’t know how to tell you,’ I say. I pace. I cannot look at her. She is looking up at me like an expectant child. ‘I know things, I saw things—’
‘He’s been arrested,’ she blurts. ‘You don’t know, do you? Your father was arrested yesterday for the murder of Taylor Dent.’
I stare at her. It doesn’t have to come from me, like some malicious lie I’ve made up; some perverse thing I’ve imagined to cause her pain. I don’t have to be the one to break it and yet I wish he hadn’t been caught. I wish she didn’t know; that he had got away with it, that they could still be together, and that I could have paid the price instead.
‘Taylor Dent? Was that his name?’ I whisper. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘You saw,’ she says. ‘You saw it happen, at Deeping.’
I nod, both of us now in a quiet daze.
‘I still don’t understand,’ she says. ‘Why run? Why did you want us to think you were dead?’
‘I didn’t!’ It comes out hysterical, and I am losing myself again. I want to tell the truth but I don’t know if I can. ‘I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t!’ I am shouting and pacing. ‘I wanted to disappear. I wanted the ground to swallow me up. I couldn’t keep his secret and I couldn’t turn him in. I couldn’t go back to Will and I couldn’t face Helena either.’
‘Helena—’
‘I know,’ I wail, fists to my stomach. ‘Helena, oh Helena.’ It comes out of my belly like fire, my guilt, my sorrow. How much I am responsible for. ‘She’s dead and it’s my fault. You don’t have to tell me, Mum. You don’t have to show me what I’ve done, what a mess I’ve made. I know.’
‘Edie,’ she says gently. ‘Edie, calm down. Come sit.’
We light a fire. We gingerly hold cups of fennel tea, as if they might break. They warm our hands and we lean into one another, staring at the flames as they crackle and dance. She is sitting with her knees together, more formal than me. My legs are curled beside me. There has been a lot of silence, the two of us allowing ourselves to exhale.
She is wearing a shirt with a navy William Morris design, swirling leaves and seed pods. My head is leaning on her shoulder. I stare at the pattern on the fabric, the pendant which nestles in the soft wrinkles of her chest. I am moved by her fastidiousness; how smart she looks. Her rings gleam on her fingers, but the skin on her hands is reptilian and her face is dragged downwards with sorrow and exhaustion. My poor mum. My tears fall again, and she kisses the top of my head.
‘Can you tell me what happened?’ she asks.
‘I went to Deeping on a Sunday, early December, it was. In the afternoon. Got there about three – it was still light. I needed somewhere to think, away from Will. I was thinking about splitting up with him.’ I look up into her face. ‘You knew that, didn’t you, Mum? I think you had an inkling that I was going to end it with him. Things had started with Helena, confusing stuff, and I didn’t know if they were a symptom of wanting to leave Will, or whether it was the start of something real with her – you know? I was really confused about it all, needed some headspace, away from both of them.
‘I’d more or less decided to sleep there. I was lying on your bed – you know how I love it in your bed. It started to get dark and I fell asleep. I woke to clattering sounds downstairs. The house was pitch dark by now and I sleepily thought: “Ah, Mum and Dad are here.” But then I snapped awake. I’d spoken to you – remember? – and you told me you were staying home that weekend. Dad had too much work on so you weren’t coming to Deeping. I froze, thinking it must be an intruder moving around downstairs. We’re so lax about security at Deeping. I’d locked the front door on arrival – I’m always nervous being in the countryside by myself – but all the same, that key in the porch …
‘There were footsteps coming up the stairs. My heart was pounding; I was terrified. I slipped off the bed and climbed inside your wardrobe, pulling the door closed and your clothes in front of my face. The intruder came into the room, right up to the wardrobe. I thought I was dead, but he pulled the drawer at the bottom and shoved something into it. I stayed there, cowering, as the footsteps receded. I heard more clattering downstairs, then the front door closed. I crept out of the wardrobe and onto the window seat. The sensor light had come on with his movement and I saw Dad open the boot of his car. I saw a body in the boot – a boy—’
‘Taylor Dent,’ says Miriam sadly.
‘I didn’t know his name. I’ve tried to find out since then – I’ve Googled missing people and murders in East Anglia – but there’s been nothing about a black boy killed in or near March. His death seemed to go unreported.’
‘Unlike yours,’ said Miriam.
‘Yes,’ I say, sitting upright. ‘In the weeks that followed, I was everywhere, but there was no mention of him.’ I slouch back down, against her shoulder. It is easier to tell her my story if I don’t look into her face. ‘I watched from the upstairs window. I was shaking. I mean, you don’t put someone in a boot unless you’re doing wrong by them. The boot is where you put animals, not people.’
‘Hadn’t he seen your car?’
‘I parked right at the end of the carport. You know how short the G-Wiz is – he can’t have seen it from the drive. My heart was thudding. I knew it was really bad – a boy in the boot. Dad was going through his pockets and the boy’s body was rocking, unconscious or dead. He searched until he found something I couldn’t see – a phone or a wallet – which he put in his own pocket. My mind was racing, thinking, why does someone go through a boy’s pockets – a boy who’s unconscious or dead? There was no explanation except the worst explanation.
‘Before I could run down to him, demand an explanation, the doors of the car had slammed shut and he had driven away. I went to the drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe to see what he’d stashed there. It was piles and piles of money, bound together with rubber bands in a plastic bag.’
‘So you took the cash?’ she says. I nod and she smiles wanly, saying, ‘At least it stayed in the family.’
‘I thought about all the things I could do: return to George Street and Will; pretend I hadn’t seen anything; tell the police what I’d seen; tell you; go to Helena. And not one of them seemed possible. I was butting up against each option and it was like being in a dodgem car, hitting the buffers. I thought about flying to Buenos Aires to find Rollo, and then I thought about telling him. The awfulness. Then I wondered if anyone would believe me. I wondered if I would seem mad, the destroyer of our family life. I wondered if in fact I had gone mad, and all of it was an apparition, that I should be sectioned. I looked at the money and I thought about disappearing. And it made sense. All I knew, Mum, you have to believe me, was that I wanted to run. My only impulse was to disappear, not to hurt you.’
‘But you did hurt me. You hurt me very deeply, Edith.’
‘I couldn’t bear knowing something that would destroy you, I didn’t want to keep his secrets but I didn’t want to betray him either. I couldn’t go back to Will and I couldn’t bear Helena, the confusion of that. I was trapped, d’you see? When I looked at the money he’d left, I knew that was my way of disappearing. Money could make it happen. I could vanish, I knew people who could help me—’
‘What people?’
I get up. I can’t look at her. ‘Another tea?’ I say, taking the cup from her hand.
‘What people, Edith?’ she says.
‘Never mind that. You don’t need to know what people. That money could make me vanish, as if the ground had opened up, and that’s what I wanted.’
I come back into the room with two steaming hot mugs. ‘What’s happened to him? Where are they keeping him?’ I ask.
‘He’s in Littlehey. Rollo will visit. We’ve instructed lawyers at Kingsley Napley.’
‘Is he all right?’
‘I haven’t seen him,’ she says, and I can see the torment written on her face. ‘I will though.’ She looks up. ‘I will see him. He’s still my husband.’
Her look is defiant and I stare at her. ‘After everything he’s done …’ I begin.
She frowns. ‘I won’t explain myself to you, Edith,’ she says. ‘I won’t justify how I feel to you.’
We are silent again, but it is not a comfortable silence.